by Rick Jones
Tin Man lowered the coils of intestine it had been feeding on, went to the rear of the Banshee, and stood within the deep shadows of the airlock, watching.
Four members of the living were racing across the floor to the ship, causing Tin Man to smile in cruel and wicked glee.
Because it knew it was about to feed once more.
“Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee,” it hissed quietly from the shadows. “Coooooomeeee.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
“Two minutes, Eriq! We have two minutes!”
The voice sounded distant and tinny, but it was enough to alert him from his detachment while his vision continued to close in at the edges.
He saw the hatchway: Level 1 was stenciled on it.
Eriq reached out a wobbly hand, grabbed the lever, and gave it a clockwise twist. There was a whoosh, and then the small door pulled back into a recess, allowing passage. Eriq looked up and saw that Sheena was struggling as well. Schott, however, appeared less weary—perhaps from working with the boilers for long periods which acclimated him, he thought.
“Less than two minutes,” Schott called down.
Eriq maneuvered into the opening, turned, and grabbed Sheena by the leg, directing her downward. Just as Sheena was about to place a foot along the rim of the hole, her eyes began to roll to the back of her head, showing whites, then released the rungs, and fell.
Eriq lashed out and grabbed her, the awkwardness and position of her weight too much for Eriq to drag into the opening alone. “Jim!” He cried out for aid. “She’s out!”
Schott climbed down, reached out to grab Sheena by the collar of her jumpsuit, and pulled her up. “Now drag her inside!” he told him.
Eriq did, carefully.
And then Schott followed with less than a minute to go before the boilers fired up again.
As Eriq carried Sheena to the opposite side of the room, Schott closed the door and locked it firmly into place. Just as he stepped back, they could hear the boilers go off, sending an upward plume of fire through the cylindrical shaft.
Schott fell against the wall, wiping sweat from his brow, relieved.
Eriq, whose vision was beginning to expand to its outer most edges, aided Sheena, who was starting to come around.
When Sheena’s eyes began to focus, she directed them to Eriq, who was smiling at her.
“I thought we lost you,” Eriq told her softly.
“What happened?”
“The heat got to you. You blacked out. Let go of the rungs.”
“Then how—”
“I caught you, and Jim over there grabbed you and helped me pull you in.”
She looked at Schott and gave him a very thankful smile.
Schott returned the welcome by giving her a mock salute.
Eriq helped her to her feet. “Can you walk?”
“Yeah,” she told him. “I’ll be fine.”
Jim Schott got to his feet as well, then pointed to the door at the opposite side of the room. “This will take us to a corridor,” he said. “And that corridor will take us right into the Portside Bay.”
Eriq nodded. “We have to get to that Banshee before they do,” he said with urgency.
“Why?” Sheena asked. “They can’t just leave us behind. Not if we’re there to catch the boat.”
“You don’t understand,” Eriq said. “A Winged Banshee can only transport of maximum of six people. If you count the pilot, Skully, his two teammates and the president, that’s five. I don’t know if there’s anyone else they left behind to post as sentry. Maybe another commando. Who knows?”
“Then how do we all decide on who stays and who goes?” she inquired.
“We don’t,” Eriq returned. “They’ve already made up their mind when they left Schott to stay behind. They had a primary objective to save the president. That was it. The rest of us, I’m sure, were considered expendable. They have no intention of allowing us on that ship.”
Her chin started to quiver. “Then how do we get out of here?”
Eriq showed her his firearm.
Schott shook his head. “You’re kidding, right? One pistol against three assault weapons.”
“If we can get to the ship before them, all I need to do is coax the pilot to fly the Banshee back to Earth.”
“And if he refuses?” Schott added.
“Then I’ll order him off the ship.”
“Then who’ll fly the Banshee out of here?”
“I will,” Eriq told him. “I flew Banshees over the Wastelands many times.”
“And if we’re late getting to the ship?” asked Sheena.
Eriq hesitated a moment before answering. “Then we’ll never get off this ship.”
Schott said nothing, but he responded by leading the way out of the Boiler Shack and to the Portside Bay.
Time was running out.
Chapter Fifty-Six
When Meade reached the airlock to the Winged Banshee, he took the steps to the doorway only to be greeted most unwelcomely.
Tin Man came out of the shadows, and Meade’s mind failed him as Tin Man stared at him from a distance of three feet through glazed-over eyes. Meade was incapable of registering the moment because he’d been rendered motionless by disbelief.
Tin Man’s skin was blue-gray, and its blood-caked lips from gorging on the pilot curled along the edges with impish delight.
“Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee.”
Just as Meade was about to utter something nonsensical, Tin Man lashed out with its hand, grabbed Meade by the throat, and yanked his esophagus free. The action was so quick it was like a snake leaping from quiescence to fang a rodent, then recoiling.
Meade brought both hands to his throat and went to his knees as his eyes became the size of Communion wafers. Blood ran between the gaps of his fingers as his life started to ebb away.
Funboy reacted by raising his weapon, but Skully slapped the barrel of the weapon aside just as Funboy pulled the trigger, the bullets stitching along a metal wall to the left of the ship.
“You can damage the Banshee if you miss, you idiot!” Skully stated sharply. “Then we’d never get off this boat.”
Meade's eyes began to roll inside their sockets showing nothing but white. He tried to gag, but couldn't as his voice box was gone. Then he fell back and rolled down the few steps with his body coming to rest at the bottom. Blood fanned out beneath him in a perfect circle.
By the time Skully and Funboy looked up, Tin Man receded into the shadows of the airlock.
“Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee.”
“The son-of-a-bitch wants to play,” said Funboy.
“Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee.”
“We have to get out of here,” stated the president, his voice trembling with fear.
Funboy removed his Ka-Bar from its sheath. The blade had a black-matte finish to it and was wickedly sharp and keen. He turned it over in his hand several times, measuring the heft and balance of it. Then grasped it firmly by the hilt, white-knuckling it.
He approached the Banshee’s stairway that led to the airlock, stepped over Meade’s body, and slowly took the steps.
“Careful,” Skully intoned.
Funboy was a master at double-edged weaponry and he could outwit and out-maneuver his opponents in any close-combat situation.
“Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee.”
Tin Man stood within the shadows.
“I’m coming, you son-of-a-bitch. And you ain’t gonna like what daddy’s bringing you.” Funboy lowered his night-vision faceplate, the world becoming fluorescent-green, and saw what the naked eye couldn’t. Tin Man was waiting for him inside the darkness. “You don’t think I can see you, you dumb bastard?”
Tin Man stood as still as a Grecian statue, while its lips peeled back and skinned its teeth enough to form a grisly smile.
Funboy took the steps, the point of his knife directed forward, the commando ready to arc it across the creature’s throat.
But Tin Man leapt from the depths
of the shadows and plucked Funboy off the step like a hawk that grabs its prey in flight, and took him to the floor below. Funboy swung his Ka-Bar, the edge of the blade creating neat slices along Tin Man’s face, ripping wounds that bled a black and viscous fluid as thick as tar.
Skully moved closer with his firearm pointed at Tin Man’s temple. But Tin Man was fast. The creature was always moving, always bobbing and weaving as it repeatedly struck Funboy with the points of its fingers even though they hadn't had time to sharpen into talons, but hard enough to drive them deeply into the rib cage and snap his bones as if they were sticks of chalk.
Funboy screamed in agony as his bones sounded off every time one cracked. Then blood forced from punctured lungs erupted from his mouth, the ribs cutting deep.
Then Skully fired a shot, the bullet tearing through Tin Man’s skull. For a moment Tin Man continued to straddle Funboy as if it was deciding on whether or not it was truly dead. Then it finally fell to its side where it lay unmoving.
Skully hunkered over Funboy. “Can you stand?”
Funboy nodded and raised his hand to Skully as a gesture to help him to his feet. But that was when Skully noted the deep raking of Funboy’s forearm. Three scratches that broke the skin, but not enough to draw blood.
Funboy looked at Skully, saw the concern on his face as Skully stepped away, and turned his forearm over to see the damage done. “Oh no,” he whispered. Then he proffered his forearm to Skully. “It’s not bleeding,” he told him, arguing his case. “I’m all right.”
“The skin was broken.”
“But I’m not bleeding. I’m not infected.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I am not . . . infected,” he stressed through clenched teeth.
Skully pointed his firearm at Funboy. “You were a good soldier,” he said evenly. “And it was an honor to have you serve under my command.”
Funboy held his hand up imploringly. “Skully, you don’t have to . . . ” Then he cut himself short as the pain of a burning itch began to wind its way through his system.
“You feel it, don’t you?” Skully asked.
Funboy strained to speak. “It’s . . . my ribs,” he said. “They’re broken.”
“You feel it, don’t you?” Skully repeated. His tone remained flat.
Funboy finally relented, knowing that death was inevitable. “Just make it quick,” he said. “I don’t want to end up like . . . ”
Skully pulled the trigger, the bullet killing Funboy before he could finish his sentence.
A ribbon of smoke slowly coiled from the barrel of his pistol as he stood over Funboy and paid homage.
“Skully.” The president sounded as if the incident of Funboy’s death meant little to him. “Can we please get the Hell out of here?”
Skully looked at him with a heated glare, which caused the president to reconsider his position. In New DC he was king, but up here it was Skully. “Please,” the president said in a more affable manner. “Please get me out of here. Please.”
For a long moment Skully pinned him with a hard stare before holstering his weapon. He was liking Michelin far less the more he got to know the man as a person: a self-centered prick.
Then Skully turned away and looked at the Banshee. He and his elite team had done their jobs as required, to save the president of the Federation of the Fields of Elysium. The cost, however, amounted to the loss of several people who were tasked to save the life of one man who chaired the throne of a dying planet.
In the end, he considered, it wasn’t worth it.
Just as he was about to board the ship along with the president, he heard a voice that was quite familiar to him. It said: “Skully.”
#
Eriq stood approximately fifty feet from the Winged Banshee with Schott and Sheena standing behind him. He was holding a gun by his side.
Skully turned to him. “This is a restricted flight,” he said.
When Eriq took a step forward, Skully aimed his assault weapon at him.
“Skully, please, there’s enough room aboard the Banshee for all of us.”
“Oh, you’re right about that,” he returned. “But this flight had an attached agenda to it. Everyone onboard Mausoleum Twenty Sixty-Nine was deemed expendable. Our primary goal was to secure the president and head back to base. You were never a part of the equation.”
“But everyone’s gone,” Eriq said. “You have room inside the Banshee to take us all.”
“The objective stands,” Skully said firmly.
Eriq raised his weapon and directed it at Michelin. “Then I’ll cancel that objective.”
Skully offered a smirk and leveled his weapon. “And then I’ll cancel you.”
“This isn’t about you staying true to an objective, Skully. This is about you making this personal. Why don’t you admit it?”
“Look, Wyman. I don’t like cowards. And I don’t like you.”
“And I don’t like the killer of defenseless men, women, and children, either, but we’re all we’ve got.” Skully then directed his weapon to the Banshee. “Six shots,” he said. “I’ll disable her before she can lift off. I’ll compromise her hull.”
“For Chrissakes, Skully,” said the president. “Let them on. That’s a direct order.”
Skully looked at the president, then at Skully and those with him. After a moment of self-debate, he raised his weapon. “You’re a lucky man, Eriq. You must have an angel sitting on your shoulder.”
“Hurry,” coaxed the president, beckoning them to get onboard. “We haven’t much time. The mausoleum continues to drift farther from Earth.”
Eriq motioned for Sheena and Jim Schott to board before him.
When everyone was onboard, it was Skully who first noticed the overpowering stench associated with massive blood loss, that of copper.
The pilot lay on the cockpit floor with his abdomen pared back and his innards exposed. Blood tarnished the walls and panels in disturbingly macabre displays, and the pilot’s controls were coated with splashes and bits of gore.
“Dammit,” Skully complained through clenched teeth.
“I’ll take the body outside,” said Eriq. “Do you want to man the controls, or do you want me to?”
“I’ll fly ‘er,” Skully said.
Eriq reached down, grabbed the pilot beneath his armpits, and dragged him toward the rear of the Winged Banshee. A thin trail of blood followed in his wake.
Skully also galvanized into action by taking the pilot’s seat. As lieutenant of Special Ops, everyone assigned to that post had to know how to fly a Banshee outside of a commissioned pilot, and since it was mandatory, Skully knew the cockpit like the proverbial back of his hand, hitting and flipping the proper toggles and switches, the engines firing.
The ship was about to take off.
But there was a problem.
The bay doors needed to be opened manually.
Dammit!
Chapter Fifty-Seven
The door leading into the Portside Bay was smashed free from the constant hammer blows by the behemoth, the door taking flight by the explosion of unimaginable force and ricocheting hard off a distant wall before skating off into darkness.
The moment the behemoth stepped into the bay, it took note of the Winged Banshee and could smell the scent of those alive within its tiny fuselage. There was nowhere else for them to go.
It had cornered its prey into a final corner for which there was no escape.
And then it bellowed, a cry of victory—and one that sent its troops of the undead to stake their claim as they spilled through the passageway like a horde of insects.
The mantra had never changed: “Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee,” they demanded.
“Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee.”
#
As Eriq opened the door to the airlock to release the pilot to the bay’s floor, he saw the behemoth standing at the opposite side of the chamber, a hulking mass of muscle and rage who stood idle while a legion of un
dead raced toward the Banshee.
“Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee.”
Eriq hoisted the body up, then cast it as far from the ship as possible. There was no time for the delicacy of laying a body to rest, and time was not a luxury.
Closing the door and sealing it shut, the engines revved.
Eriq then went into the Banshee’s small compartment area where everyone was strapped in, and secured himself. “We’ve got company!” he called to Skully.
“So I hear.” And then: “We’ve got a problem.”
President Michelin rolled his eyes. Can the situation get any worse?
“The doors need to be opened manually. We’re not locked into the comm center because there’s no one there to link us.”
“What about the weaponry system?” asked Eriq. “Winged Banshees are usually equipped with two Reaper missiles locked to the undercarriage.”
Skully kicked himself mentally. Reaper missiles were concealed in the undercarriage, but that wasn’t what bothered him. What bothered him was that Eriq was the one who had the insight to recall the weaponry system, not him. Immediately he throttled forward to redirect the Banshee so that the points of the missiles could be directed at the bay’s loading door.
And that’s when the undead attacked the ship and scoured the surface like leeches.
Footsteps could be heard as they took to the outside of the ship.
And then came the banging, powerful thrusts and blows that drove baseball-sized dents inward.
“My God!” yelled President Michelin. “We’re not going to make it! We’re not!”
“Get ahold of yourself!” returned Eriq.
More pounding.
More dents.
But the hard shell of the Winged Banshee was holding.
“Any time now!” Eriq called to Skully.
Skully hit the toggles to lower the missile’s carriage from the ship’s underbelly, and when he rolled the Winged Banshee into position to face the door, he pressed the ‘FIRE’ button. The missiles corkscrewed through the air for several meters before leveling off, then hit the door with surgical precision, the blasts tearing a huge hole through the bay door, creating a vacuum.
